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I tried to separate them. I really did. In the first version of the Baseball 100, I ended up with several double-entries, players who just seemed to go well together, like Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell (born on the same day). The idea this time around was not to use that two-players-in-one crutch. But there really was no way to split up Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker. They were drafted a year apart by the Detroit Tigers, but became a double-play combination in the minor leagues, for the Montgomery Rebels in the Southern League in 1977. They were called up to the big leagues on the same day, Sept. 9, 1977. Each made his debut in the second game of a doubleheader against the Boston...
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Their top WAR’s:
Trammell: 8.2, 6.7, 6.7, 6.4, 6.0, 6.0
Whitaker: 6.8, 6.7, 5.4, 5.4, 4.7, 4.5
I’m not sure I get difference #4. Whitaker was bold and outspoken? I don’t remember that at all. He was pretty quiet. And he absolutely needs to be in the HOF.
One other little tidbit – Whitaker had the arm to play shortstop. Check out his relay throw in the 1984 WS Game 1 to nab Bevacqua at third.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuB_H19cPZM
One spring, Sparky became enamored with a infield prospect, and seriously considered moving Whitaker to third.
If you look at their careers starting in 1978 (neither played even 20 games in ’77) and then disregard their peak and pit seasons Whitaker takes the bigger WAR hit — minus 8.3 to minus 7.1 for Trammell. That’s because Whitaker simply didn’t have any bad seasons to disregard whereas Trammell did.
They’re both awesomely good; for post 1947 careers they’re both top 40 position players. Whitaker’s career rates a bit higher but not enough to really choose between them. And trying to do so misses the point anyway, as your article makes so plain — as good as they were individually it is what they accomplished together as the greatest double-play tandem ever that is truly memorable.
So I couldn’t agree with you more Joe, they should have gone in together, and its a shame the Hall (and the writers too) doesn’t focus more on baseball as a Fun Game; they seem to lose that in all the drama and pomp.
As a lifelong Tigers fan growing up in the early ’80’s as these 2 blossomed, and the team with them, I agree with most everything here. Both belong in the Hall, and they should have gone in together. There are very, very few duos in the history of baseball more linked together than these 2 are.
I can see why Joe wanted to keep them together here, as they are linked together that tightly. However, having Lou here seems a bit out of place given Joe’s heavy emphasis on peak value. Trammell, at his best, was the better of the two players, but he was also injury prone, especially as he aged. Whitaker was remarkably steady, but only had a couple of seasons that stood out from the rest of his stat line.
Great article, Joe. Here’s hoping that someday Sweet Lou will join Tram in Cooperstown.
George Bell won the AL MVP in 1987 almost entirely because he led the league in RBIs. The Jays got swept by the Tigers the last weekend of the season to miss out on the division title, and Trammell hit a homer in the first of those games and got a couple of other hits, while Bell didn’t do much. Trammell had hit .417(!) in Sept/Oct that year, while Bell did basically what he’d been doing all year, so you would think recency bias would have flipped more voters to Trammell’s side.
But in those days, as I’m sure you’ll recall, RBIs were everything, and Bell had almost 30 more of them (to go with almost 20 more HR) than Trammell did.
Between 1967, when they introduced a CYA for each league and the voters stopped voting for pitchers for the MVP award so much, and 1998 , when the public conversation (read: Rob Neyer) started shifting the focus away from traditional stats like BA and RBI, 40% of the AL MVP winners and 50% of the NL MVP winners were also the RBI champ. When they weren’t it was often because there was some other narrative going on, a pitcher or a player at a “defense-first” position doing something incredible, like Clemens in 1986, or Ripken in 1991. If they played on a bad team, were deemed to have negative defensive value or weren’t liked by the writers (Albert Belle), then someone else might sneak in. But almost any RBI leader, especially if by a significant margin, who was on a division winner or something close to it, usually won.
Mercifully it’s not like that so much anymore, so maybe in the future there won’t be so many debates about players’ HoF candidacy based on awards the *should* have won. What a boring Internet that will be. 😉
Bell was a poor MVP choice, but I’m not sure that it was a worse choice than Joe’s choice of Whitaker for the top 100.
Fantastic read, thanks Joe.
Another peak WAR comparison:
Whitaker: 6.8, 6.7, 5.4, 5.4, 4.7, 4.5
Another Second Baseman: 9.0, 8.2, 7.8, 7.3, 7.3, 5.8
How the heck can you think Whitaker was a better player at his peak than Another Second Baseman?
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Here are the *active* 2B with a higher WAR7 than Whitaker:
– Robinson Cano
– Chase Utley (now retired)
– Dustin Pedroia
– Ian Kinsler
– Ben Zobrist
– and Jose Altuve, after next season.
It’s just nutso to think that Whitaker is a Top 100 player. Thank goodness the writers and vets soundly rejected him for the HoF.
In the first-100 list, Whitaker was at 98, and a post was made later that Alan Trammell’s omission was a mistake. That is a cop-out. Trammell’s number can be mentioned, with the idea that everybody else under that number is pushed down by one, and the original #100 (Curt Schilling) now drops out of the list. If Babe Ruth was at 91, but now Trammell is sought at that number, then Ruth becomes 92., 92 becomes 93, and so on.
Now two players are presented as #93. That is another cop-out. They can go in as 92-a and 92-b with 93 skipped, if it is to be Baseball-100. Else it becomes Baseball-101.
” In the first version of the Baseball 100, I ended up with several double-entries” -> there was just one double-entry for Bagwell plus whoever, and it was mentioned that one more double entry was to follow. That is just two, which is not anybody’s idea of ‘several’.
With Whitaker having higher WAR, if Trammell in top-100 is okay, then Whitaker’s presence there should not be all that nutso.
I think it’s nutso if you’re going by peak, which Joe said he was. Lou would make a top 100 list of players in their 30’s, though… 🙂
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My records show Whitaker at #97 on the old 100, and Ron Santo at #98.
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A third double entry was Derek Jeter and Roy Hobbs at #57. So it was actually the Baseball 103, if Hobbs counts. 🙂
Oops, that’s Baseball *104*, with Trammell included…
I don’t know whether WAR7 is known to be the dominant criterion for the Top-100 list or that it is so is a guess by the readers. Posnanski has said that Tom Tango came up with a system which he has used as a starting point, and when something did not feel right (like, presumably, Whitaker not being in the top 100) necessary adjustments were made.
The original Baseball-100 was actually Baseball-102. But Trammell was not included. Make it 103, then. Plus Roy Hobbs.
I’m just using WAR7 because it’s convenient. It doesn’t matter though… there can’t be any measure of peak value that places Whitaker in the top 100.
Whitaker hasn’t made the list because of his WAR5 or WAR6 or WAR7, clearly. That means that Posnanski likes him for his skill or elegance or overall contribution which amounted to a higher WAR than Trammell’s. Some measure of subjectivity in such a list is only to be expected.
The omissions from these lists can make for a more interesting discussion. In the 2014-100, there was room for only one of these guys (as per some reader’s comment back then) :
Gary Carter, Pop Lloyd, Mike Piazza and Phil Niekro . Since there were four Negro Leaguers in that list, Lloyd had made the list, with Paige, Gibson and Charleston.
There is a long way to go before the omissions from 2018-100 version become obvious.
OK, I’ve said too much about Whitaker, it’s fine if Joe wants him in his top 100 with Trammell. The four omissions you mention were talked about quite a bit back then. Now, I believe that Joe’s first list was largely based on Bill James’ top 100 and on ESPN’s top 100. Here are the ranks of those four players on those lists. (This comes from an old spreadsheet of mine, which hopefully is accurate. 🙂 My notes say James’ list comes from the New Historical Baseball Abstract, and can be found on a game at Sporcle. The ESPN list comes from their Hall of 100.)
Carter – James 110, ESPN 87
Lloyd – James 27, ESPN —
Piazza – James 79, ESPN 79
Niekro – James –, ESPN 100
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The rankings above at least partially explain Joe’s omissions of Carter and Niekro. Lloyd was in, presumably. That leaves Piazza, so maybe Joe just omitted him by mistake.
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FWIW: Neither Trammell or Whitaker are on James’ or ESPN’s lists.
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Any list that goes strictly by WAR has to deal with the fact that the top catchers have much less WAR than the top players at any other position. Example: Bench has 75, Carter has 70, and these happen to be the same as Whitaker and Trammell (!). It’s unclear to me whether this is a problem with WAR; it may be that it makes sense because even the very greatest catchers’ offense does not reach the stratosphere that the greatest of all other positions reach (except for Piazza, and Bench to a smaller extent), they’re not so much ahead of their colleagues at catcher. And catchers usually get about 15% less playing time, meaning 15% less WAR; what to do about that?
Whitaker is clearly a HOFer from his era. It’s discussed often, but comparing players from different eras is pointless. I realize advanced stats try to normalize for various factors, but it never really works because players are different and competion changes.
A couple more easy ways to separate Trammell & Whitaker: their playoff stats…
Whitaker: .204/.350/.306
Trammell: .333/.404/.588
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And their MVP votes…
Whitaker: an 8th.
Trammell: a 2nd, 7th, 9th, 15th, 20th, and 21st.
Joe:
I don’t even know if it’s possible to comment on your post today over at MLB.com – “Ranking every 7-game World Series” (http://www.mlb.com/news/best-world-series-ever/c-296869362) – so I’m stuck commenting here.
“Much of this is subjective, but we did the math and ranked all 39 seven-game World Series”, you write. Over at The Baseball Gauge (http://thebaseballgauge.com/post.php), Dan Hirsch actually *has* “done the math” and totaled up “Championship Win Probability Added” (cWPA) for Every. Single. Playoff. Series. Ever.
By taking the “Win Probability Added” statistic (from Baseball Reference), modifying it slightly to give the added chance for winning the World Series for each play, and then figuring out which series had the wildest swings in cWPA, one can assign a number that gives a good value for just how exciting a series was. Hirsch’s got graphs, too, so you can see just how the championship odds changed over the course of the series.
Earlier this year, I summarized his results over at my own blog:
http://pureblather.com/2018/03/07/the-greatest-world-series-ever/
There are some interesting differences from your list….
Patreon problems again. Ugh.
I can no longer unlock this with Patreon. When I click on that, it asks me to allow Patreon to view my pledge amount, but then takes me back to the page that asks me to unlock with Patreon. Happy weekend, Joe.
wondering whether sparkys, la russas, earl weavers, stengels will make it to shadowball 100.
Perhaps Branch Rickey will be Shadowball 42.
What’s going on w Patreon? Can’t get in. No even via the usual ‘view pledge amount’. Have not changed devices, or uploaded new software version. Help.
One thing that should happen that isn’t contingent on the whims of HoF voters: The Tigers should put up statues of Tram and Lou turning a double play next to their five other all-time greats on the Comerica Park concourse. I think there’s the room. Always thought maybe they’d left the space on purpose.
The writer’s made the right call by leaving Whitaker out of the HOF. As much as I Like guys who had longevity, I think we should pretty much require that they at some point be ‘great’…preferably for several seasons. Whitaker was arguably never great even for one season. Yeah we can quibble that maybe 6.8 WAR or 6.7 WAR is ‘great’, but take a look at those seasons. In his 6.8 WAR year, Whitaker had a triple crown line of 23 78 .279 with 131 hits. His 6.7 WAR year was better; he batted .320..but only had 12 HR and 72 RBI. Neither year was MVP caliber, even by the standards of the time. He also was not really good on the bases. These were by far his two best seasons.
Total WAR should not be used to decide HOF worthiness, any more than total games played should. A good player who plays a long time will rack up WAR, but never really be a HOF type of player. A guy who gets 4 WAR for 15 straight years (which isn’t far from what Lou did), will have HOF type of WAR. But so what?
“The writer’s made the right call by leaving Whitaker out of the HOF.” -> I wonder what made the writers make the right call for Whitaker, because the same set of writers voted Tony Perez and Kirby Puckett in. As a small-hall votary, I would like the writers to be allowed to name only two players per year on their HoF ballot.
We can easily see how Lou wasn’t HOf caliber by comparing him to another guy in his two best seasons. In 1991, his best year, he had his 23 78 .279 line, and yeah it was a low offensive era. But it WAS possible for a middle infielder to have great numbers, as Cal Ripken ( a REAL HOFer) had a 27 102 .318, with 47 doubles, 211 ghits and 121 runs, and won MVP.
In Whitaker’s second best year, 1983, he had his 12 72 .320 line, but again Cal easily bested him with a 34 114 .323 line and won MVP again.
Ripken is a HOFer. Whitaker is not.
I agree with invitro and Will. This seems to be a case where the sentimental narrative is blinding Joe to the facts.